by Eric Gene
"But I'm almost there, I can feel it" he said with a surge of excitement as he continued searching for his missing papers.
"Err, what did you say your name was again?" Dr. Maurice asked all of a sudden.
Turning, he was met with the sight of other papers hanging loosely on his office door. Jason had crept out quietly while he had been engrossed in his search.
"Good riddance" he grumbled and continued searching.
Jason walked quickly back to the elevator once he had stepped out of Dr. Maurice's office. The papers he had with him were bound to be useful. Although he could hardly trust anyone, he was willing to bet that Commander Blair was going to be more forthcoming than the commander of Haven 20.
"Back so soon? How was your first day?" one of the guards asked with a grin as Jason approached them. He had almost walked past absentmindedly when the other used his gun to obstruct his path.
"Wow, calm down... What did the crazy scientist tell you?" he asked as Jason took a few steps back.
"Oh I'm sorry, I just had a lot on my mind... I'm definitely going to have a word with the commander" Jason said, feigning anger.
"You've only just had your first two hours. What do you think the commander will do? Let you off?" one of the guards said, bursting into a guffaw.
"How exactly hasn't he been retired?" Jason said casually as both guards had their fill of laughter. He waited.
"Beats you and me both... Just don't lose the nuts in your head over the good old doctor" one of the guards breathed out.
"Yeah sure, I'll need some painkillers for the headache I've got" Jason said, and made to get into the elevator. One of the guards placed a hand on his shoulder and said "sorry man, you're supposed to tender everything in your possession before stepping out"
"Wait what? But this is exactly how I came in" Jason said, his voice showed he was surprised.
"I'm sure you're a rookie scientist, but then rules are rules my friend" the guard said casually.
Jason shrugged and zipped down his suit. He emptied his trouser and shirt pockets, and raised his shirt slightly so they could see. As though he had anticipated a check on his way out, he had stashed the papers in his trousers. His buttocks was stuck against the papers hidden at his back.
Satisfied, he was about zipping up when the guards pointed at his helmet. He was to take it off.
"Sorry guys, I only wore this to protect myself from the toxic air in the main laboratory. Heck, I'm surprised you two are still standing" Jason said lightly and tried to take a step further. At that, the guards cocked their guns in unison.
"Rules are rules, hazmat suits are supposed to be taken off completely before going back to the surface. It's part of the lab's safety measures" a guard said, pointing his gun at Jason. Their cheery faces had been replaced by stern faces and furrowed brows.
Chapter 2
Phase Two
Jason took a quick glance behind him. The corridor leading to the elevator was empty save for he and the guards.
"I'm sorry guys, I know you're doing your duty... I'm about to do mine" he said, turning back to face the guards who gave confused glances at one another. Without warning, Jason swept his hands past the back of their heads, cupped the two and brought them hard against each other. The result was a harsh thump that forced the guards into an unsolicited sleep. They had been knocked unconscious, and were bound to wake with a headache.
Jason made his getaway to the surface tent where he pulled off the hazmat suit and stashed it alongside the rest in a locker that was flanked by stacks of boxes. It was still well into the night when he resurfaced. He waited quietly for the sentry guard he had earlier taken out, to make his routine wall around the tent before stepping out into the darkness. Walking through the darkness, Jason found his way back to the laborer's tent where he ran into a guard who was making his rounds.
"Who're you? What are you doing out by this time?" grunted the soldier who had steadied himself from the bump. Jason had also been taken by surprise.
"I'm sorry, I was pressed" Jason stuttered with his head bowed.
"Well get in then" the guard barked. Jason responded by rushing into the tent where he found Ben waiting in his bed. The fat middle aged man turned abruptly from his feigned sleep once Jason tapped him.
"Tell me you weren't caught" he whispered quickly. Jason shook his head, and crumbled into the bed next to him.
"I got my answers" he said simply
"Now get off my bed... You have yours" he grunted as he stretched himself fully into his bed. Ben smiled and scampered off to his, trying hard not to make a sound.
~~~
Morning came, and Jason watched to see if there was going to be a suddenly roll call. If the guards were smart, they would keep things quiet. The captain in charge of the outpost hadn't seemed like a nice man, and they were most likely going to suffer a worse fate should it be heard that someone infiltrated the research tent.
"What are you looking at" Ben asked Jason who had been taking sneak peeks at the guards positioned around their site they were digging. He was leaning slightly on his digger.
"The guards... How many were stationed with us the last time?" he asked. He had struck his digger into the ground once more.
"Err... Eight? Why, what's wrong?"
"I only count six" Jason said, thrusting into the ground again. Ben looked up, true to his words, the guards had been reduced to six. Four positioned at the top edges of the work site, and two at the entrance.
"Well, guess we know where the other two would be" he said raising his digger for a strike.
"Yeah... Might be a good idea to switch places" Jason told Ben. The papers were important, and he knew that Dr. Maurice was definitely going to call for a search. Ben was the least likely to be suspected with his plump shape.
"Once we're done, I suspect the bigger laborers will be marched off for identification"
"If that happens" he said "you pick my book and keep it hidden in your own corner till the coast is clear"
Ben nodded in response.
It hadn't gotten past a few minutes when six more soldiers trooped into the work site. One of the captains led the team and began picking laborers at random. Jason was roughly picked to join those who had been picked. True to his words, they were promptly marched out of the site.
Ben took the cue and tried to excuse himself. He needed to hurry back to his tent for a pill which the medical unit had recommended for him. It had been a perfect lie, and the guards had let him go, they were much too disinterested to follow a fat man back to his tent to be sure he wasn't going to do anything stupid.
Once in, Ben hurried off to Jason's corner where he picked up the book Jason had instructed him to. Jason had deftly concealed it underneath his bed, and it had only been because he had seen Jason keep it there the night before. It was a brown leather bounded book that had an old picture of his wife and baby attached to the front cover. Hurriedly, Ben hid it underneath his bed and rushed out. He took a gulp of water, dropped a little on his hand and went back to the work site flexing his hands as though he wanted to get the water off.
"Thanks, you're a life saver" he said casually to the guards at the entrance before sauntering off to his station where he continued digging.
~~~
Among the options touted to bring the end of the human race, was the humans themselves. The sun was bound to finish its lifespan and signal the end of life on earth. But that was only going to happen if humans had not ended themselves by their own hands before then. The depletion of the ozone layer was minute compared to the wars waged by humans against humans. It had gone beyond nuclear weapons to bioweapons.
The pandemic had shaken the earth to its core, and the world was only just recovering. But there were worse things to come.
The cult acted as planned, touting the governments as antihuman for not choosing to construct safe havens that would make vaccination easy. True to their schemes, the media was awash with angry citizens demanding for t
he creation of safe havens. Little by little, the people who were vehement against building a one world government, soon turned against their governments and demanded for a one world government. It had been just like Stalin had said. Man was naturally inclined to defend its liberty. Although that liberty oftentimes proved to be too dangerous, no one could actually curb man's innate desire to be free.
The secret however was simple, playing the right cards would have the people offering up their liberty. This had first succeeded through the global lockdown across all nations, and it was only a matter of time before they yielded to getting vaccinated. It was only a matter of time before the governments yield to the demands of the people. After all, they were supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people.
While governments raced against the clock to provide full functional vaccines, the cult had its own race against time. December was only three months away, and that wasn't good news. Their doctors were still finding it hard to culture a vaccine for their supposed immunity.
For the regular humans infected, it was easy to detect the virus's activity in their blood. But for the top guns who had been inoculated by Dr. Hans, theirs was in a dormant undetectable state. For all they knew, it could be activated by the same frequency Dr. Hans had plotted to release once Christmas came.
Mr. Mao was still in charge of the laboratory Dr. Hans had been working in. Much to his chagrin, none of the doctors who worked with Dr. Hans was able to provide details on the virus. Different tests using their blood samples continued failing as it seemed they needed to get the virus active before they would make any meaningful progress.
The cult's spokesman had been aghast by the news. Dr. Hans had locked them in, and there was no guarantee that they were coming out alive. He had truly prepared to take them down should they try to take him down.
"Are you saying we'll need to wait?" Mr. Mao had queried the doctor who brought in the latest report on their failed tests. The doctor had only nodded and dropped the report on Mr. Mao's desk. It was the same office overlooking the rest of the laboratory, the one Dr. Hans had occupied.
"Alright, thank you" Mr. Mao had struggled to say after being silent for a while. His hands were draped over his face as he thought of how he was going to break the news to the others. Mr. Reagan was surely going to gloat about his idea of taking down the satellite.
~~~
"Hey what happened back there" Ben queried Jason once he'd returned to the tent.
"There's a horde coming, and they need more hands at the outpost" Jason shrugged. As it turned out, nothing had been said concerning the infiltration, and it would seem Dr. Maurice was most likely too occupied to report his missing papers. For all Jason knew, the old scientist could replicate the content of the papers.
"OK, that's bad news" Ben sputtered hesitantly. His eyes had widened with surprise that left him speechless for a few seconds.
"Yeah, and we're going to have a little crash course on handling guns, reloading and the likes" Jason said casually, he was hardly bothered.
"What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost" Jason asked, noting the fearful expression on Ben's face.
"Oh nah, it's nothing" he replied. Although he tried to feign being disinterest, his hands gave him away with their visible twitching.
"Hmmm, you've encountered a horde before?" Jason queried, pointing at Ben's shaking hands.
Flinging his hands to his back, Ben replied "my first haven... We didn't stand a chance"
Jason looked on with surprise written on his face. Ben continued
"We didn't really know how they got past the outpost... But then, I'd say those bastard were drunk in their tower"
"Anyway, I woke up to sudden gunshots and screams. I really don't know how I survived, but I did..."
"Hehehe, I really thought I'd lose it, you know" he said, tapping his belly. Jason smirked at the idea of a fat man running for his life.
"Well, I joined the train of those running. Good thing was, I wasn't in the front lines nor at the back, so I was somehow safe in the middle"
"Tough break huh" Jason quipped, noting the shaking in Ben's voice. Turns out, his wasn't the only haven that had been overrun.
"Yeah sure... Thanks to the soldiers who survived and were on the run with us, we survived long enough to come all the way from Haven 9 to this place"
"Lost a lot of good men and women on the way" Ben said with a sigh. His eyes stared into bleakly.
"You know, how we got overrun still confuses me... It was like they'd taken out all the soldiers and quietly infiltrated. Or maybe not quietly enough haha" he laughed. Jason smiled in return, it turned out that they both had something in common.
"Anyway, here I am, safe and sound. Although not in the best of circumstances" he added with a shrug.
Both men drifted into silence, staring at one another. Ben didn't seem hopeful that they would pull through the horde, and Jason who didn't want to attract attention to his military experience, found himself in a bit of confusion. If he fought as he normally would, there were bound to be questions. That would most likely put him as a prime suspect should there be an investigation of the missing papers and knocking out of three guards in one night.
Although Jason could not tell the size of the horde, but if it required hiring more hands out of laborers, especially in an haven twice as big as Haven 13, then they were definitely in for a shit show.
Piecing bits of information together, Jason decided he just might have overstayed his welcome in Haven 20. If the horde posed too great a threat to neutralize, then his best option would be to escape.
"What do you say to getting out of here?" he piped up. Ben who had been lost in his own thoughts shook his head in surprise and asked "sorry, what?"
"Just in case things go down, what do you think about surviving out there?" Jason repeated, his voice had grown quiet.
"Err with who?" Ben asked, his eyes slowly lit up as he realized what Jason was proposing
"Wait, you mean... How's that going... Are you sure about this?" he asked, stumbling through his words. He never took Jason for a fighter, and had shrugged off his infiltration plans as nothing serious. Even if Jason was a fighter, he doubted if Jason had the experience and skills for facing off zombies.
But as he looked at Jason with his calm exterior, he gradually began understanding what was at play.
Jason was most likely an undercover agent from another haven. That seemed plausible with the way people kept getting missing in the haven, perhaps he was sent to investigate something in the haven. That explained the whole infiltration of the research unit.
Or maybe Jason was just a free ranger. He had heard about free rangers who were loyal to no haven and mostly lived out in wild. Haven Commanders never liked their lot, and as a result they mostly sneaked into havens, get whatever supplies they needed, and sneaked back out. Should they be caught, they were bound to face execution or exile, depending on the Commander in charge.
"Err, tell me one thing... Are you a spy or something? Or maybe you're one of those living it out in the wild?" Ben asked, he was slow with each word as though fearing the reaction he could get. If he was a free ranger, then he could easily snap Ben's neck and hide his body to cover his tracks, and if he was a spy of sorts, he could still do some damage.
"OK relax Ben, I'm not a killer" Jason said, his hands had gone up to his sides as though surrendering.
"Let's just say I'm somewhere in the middle..." he said before adding "or maybe nowhere at all"
"Look, who I am is not really important right now. So are you in or out?" Jason piped up, there had been a sudden whistle outside the tent. Time wasn't on their side.
"OK fine, I had a little bit of humor coming up, but then..." he trailed off, thumping his stomach lightly. Jason got the message and laughed.
"Don't worry, you'll lose some weight by the time we get to another haven"
"Come again, what did you say?" Ben asked to which Jason said "remember I said I
might be somewhere in the middle? You'll be fine when I return you to the last haven I visited"
No sooner had Jason said those words, three soldiers had stormed into the tent and began barking orders. The laborers were going to be needed at the outpost. They were going to stand ready to reload ammunitions while the soldiers took down the zombies.
Those who had earlier be selected were bundled off to the Haven's armory where they were given automatic rifles and ammos. From there, they were marched to the outpost where one of the captains was briefing his men about what they were soon to face.
While he spoke, Jason glanced around, raking in the sight of about a hundred men soon to face zombies in their thousands. The Captain in charge of the outpost had most likely led out a team of another hundred or more to face the horde before they closed in on the haven.
If his speculations were correct, there would be a few soldiers left in the Haven's main ground just to maintain calm. That would mean, he only needed to sneak back into the main ground while the battle raged, pick up Ben and try to convince Dr. Maurice to come with him, or get him knocked out.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Ben huddled into another group. It comprised of mainly of the laborers and a few kitchen boys. These were loaded with boxes of ammo pouches, buckets full of crossbows and arrows. They were also going to join in the fight should things go south.
With Ben stationed in the outpost too, Jason ticked him off in his checklist for his planned escape. What was left, was to hurdle back to the research unit and pick up Dr. Maurice; his papers were safely stashed in his shirt, just in front of his stomach.
Once the captain was done with his lengthy speech, he divided the men into four teams. One manned the top platforms of the outpost's entrance, while another manned the ground.
Jason found himself in one of the teams that were stationed a few metres outside the outpost. Ben and five other laborers had been listed into the second team as ammo support. Fate had done its bit in ensuring that they stayed close to one another, it was all left to Ben to stay alive, and for Jason to act according to plan.
